San Diego Life Sciences Roundup: Receptos, Arena, NuVasive, & More

Amid the hectic pace of earnings releases, we saw a number of partnership agreements and other developments coming out of San Diego’s life sciences community.  Here’s my wrap-up.

—Shares of San Diego-based Receptos (NASDAQ: [[ticker:RCPT]]), a biotech developing new treatments for immune disorders, began trading on the Nasdaq exchange this morning after the company said it had priced a bigger-than-expected IPO at $14 a share. The company raised $73 million by offering 5.2 million shares, an increase from its planned offering of 4.7 million shares. Receptos granted its underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 780,000 shares to cover any over-allotments.

—Another San Diego biotech, cancer drug developer Ambit Biosciences, is waiting in the wings for its IPO debut. Ambit, which would trade on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol AMBI, plans to raise $65 million by offering 4.6 million shares at a price range between $13 to $15.

—San Diego’s Arena Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ARNA]]) and its partner Eisai Pharmaceuticals of Japan said they can begin sales of lorcaserin (Belviq) as a treatment for obesity (in addition to diet and exercise) next month, after winning final approval from the DEA. In giving its approval to lorcaserin last year, the FDA recommended a DEA review last year to help prevent abuse of the weight-loss drug. Arena failed to win FDA approval for lorcaserin in 2010. The DEA rated lorcaserin as a Schedule 4 controlled substance, which carries a relatively low risk of abuse. Eisai also will pay Arena a $65 million milestone payment due under their partnership agreement.

—The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) said it signed a five-year agreement with Janssen Pharmaceuticals to collaborate on infectious disease research and discovery, with an initial goal targeting

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.